Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [106]
My heart thumped hard inside my ribs. I told the driver to wait, got out of the car, and stepped towards her, but a woman carrying a tray of fish upon her head passed in front of me. The fish were packed into tight circles with all the care of a flower arrangement, their mouths open, pointed at the sky as though they were catching raindrops. For a few moments my view was blocked and when the way was clear again, my mother was gone. I craned my neck, searching for her among the people changing buses, but I couldn’t find her again.
All the way home I wondered what I might have said to her. What kind of life was she leading? Did she even know I was back home?
Then I decided maybe it hadn’t been her at all. Just a woman with the same look. Why, I probably wouldn’t even recognise her now. By the time I was in front of the gates of my house I had decided I had been mistaken.
Ambrose’s work kept him late at the office on many evenings. There were times when I was already asleep by the time he came home. The lawyers in his office were labouring around the clock drafting the new constitution to turn us into a republic. It was important work.
One evening he arrived home bringing a friend of his, a townsmate whom he had happened upon in the street. I don’t mind telling you that from the very start there was something about this man that I didn’t like. He sweated and wiped his forehead with a flannel he kept in his pocket. He wore a suit, shiny at the lapels. And shoes made from two types of leather like a Nigerian pastor. He held on to my hand for too long and pushed his face into mine, his breath was sour and the look he gave me was of hunger mixed with something knowing.
It was a Thursday, the servants’ day off. I went to the fridge and fetched cold beers, poured some nuts into a dish along with some of Ambrose’s favourite fried dough pieces and carried them out to where the two of them sat at the front of the house.
How this man liked to talk! And to drink. Several beers were downed, Ambrose went to fetch a bottle of Scotch and set it on the table. I watched as the man filled his glass right up to the brim. I tried to replace the bottle with a bowl of cashew nuts, but he waved at me to put it back. Time passed with no indication of when he might be leaving. We sat side by side on the settee watching him drink, until Ambrose was obliged to invite him to eat with us. I whispered into Ambrose’s ear there was no food. Ambrose’s erratic hours meant he had taken to eating on his way home. I ate with the children. It was too late now to start cooking.
’OK, we’ll go out.‘ Ambrose picked up his friend’s jacket just as the man poured himself a third glass of whisky.
‘What? Hey! Out you say? But I am very comfortable here. This is a fine place you have.’
Ambrose apologised, explaining there was nothing to eat. His friend belched and laughed, a big laugh, fat with scorn.
‘Let your woman cook some rice for us. What do you think a wife is for, my man? Or don’t you know? Maybe you’d like me to tell you.’ This time his laugh was harsh: a coarse, dry cough.
Well, I’m sure you can guess by now Ambrose didn’t like to be mocked. Who does, after all? I would have felt better if he’d told his friend to watch how he spoke in front of me, but instead he tossed the man’s jacket towards him.
‘Come on. We’ll get some roast meat.’ He turned to leave, without looking once at me, though the set of his jaw betrayed his mood.
But his friend was too drunk to notice. I saw him clap Ambrose on the shoulder as he staggered out, heard him teasing Ambrose about what a spoiled wife I was. ‘Is that what they teach you in England?’
And that laugh. ‘Heh! Heh!’ All the way down the lane.
I sat in the house listening to that laugh, like a bad odour, mingling with the smell of the frangipani. I went to the bathroom and took a cigarette from the packet of 555s I kept wedged behind the cabinet. Ambrose, who once used to light my cigarettes with a lighter he kept in his pocket, now forbade me to smoke.